Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
Did you ever play the Worms computer games? You may be too young, or too old. They have no lasting cultural impact to speak of. For a while there, though, for a few blessed years, everyone loved Worms. And why wouldn’t you? Who doesn’t love moving adorable animated worms around a screen, picking a weapon, and opening fire? The idea of a sarcastic-sounding worm with a fat cartoon Glock is good comedy. Or at least it was then. American culture ca. 2000 was in a weird place.
Memories of Worms are sufficient enough that my copy of the game, from designers Jack Caesar and Matt Gilbert, was met with excitement. “Oh, man, they made a Worms game?” That sort of thing. And indeed they did! Publisher Mantic Games has issued a Worms game.
For those who never played the computer games, the idea is to blow things up. Blow ‘em up real good. You are trying to eliminate your opponent’s worms by reducing their health or blasting them into the sea. Either works. Any dead worm is a good worm, as far as you’re concerned.
If you have played the game and you’re worried about whether or not they got the feel right, let me tell you a quick story:
I set up a group of four to play Worms: The Board Game at the weekly gaming night I run at work. We went over the rules, which are pretty light, they set up the minis, which are pretty cute, and I walked away to check on other tables. When I came back less than five minutes later, three players had already had multiple worms eliminated from the game. The first player to take a turn had a bit of a misfire with their bazooka, igniting a nearby oil drum and clearing off nearly half the board.
Perfect.
Suffice it to say that this is not a game of strategy and control. Every turn, you pick a weapon, play the weapon, roll the dice, and find out what happens. Keep in mind that nothing goes to plan. There’s wind to contend with. There are misfires. There are unintended chain reactions. People get blown backwards. Spaces of the board can get blown up and turned into water. If you’re reading this and you’ve played the game, you’re nodding with a crazed look in your eyes. This is what we were promised.
If you haven’t played the game, y’know, it’s cute and it’s fun and it’s silly and you could do worse. The original draft of that sentence said “a lot worse,” but that may be pushing the case. I don’t know that there’s much to particularly recommend Worms, but it occurs to me now that this may be Magical Athlete for people who think they’re too serious for Magical Athlete. This doesn’t have all that much more control than a roll-and-move, but you might be able to trick your serious friends into thinking it does.
Worms: The Board Game details
- Designer: Jack Caesar, Matt Gilbert
- Artists: Jose David Lanza Cebrian
- Publishers: Banana Games, Fabrika Igr, Fun Geek Shop, Mantic Games, Pixie Games, Raven Distribution, Team17 Digital Ltd., TLAMA games
- Release Date: 2024
- Player count : 2 - 6
- Age range : 10+
- Time range : 45 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Bias, Dice Rolling, Hexagon Grid, Line of Sight, Map Reduction, Modular Board, Take That
- BGG Geek Rating: 7.21765 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
- More articles about Worms: The Board Game.
